FanPost

Could We Actually See A Cleveland Reunion In Los Angeles?

Curry and Irving 1 on 1, Irving puts it up… it’s good! Kyrie irving from downtown ! it’s June 19th 2016, Kyrie Irving just hit the biggest shot of his career with less than a minute left that all but seals the 3-1 comeback, the first in nba finals history, and moments later, the the Cleveland Cavaliers are finally champions. LeBron james and Kyrie Irving seemed like a match made in heaven, they proved they could win against the greatest team of all time, so what happened?

5 years later, neither are in Cleveland, Kyrie is in Brooklyn after leaving Cleveland than Boston and finally teaming up with Kevin Durant, who ironically if not for him, the cavaliers would’ve had a much much better chance running it back against Golden State for the next few years, and Lebron made his way to Los Angeles in 2018, and they traded for Anthony Davis a season later, bringing them a championship his first fully healthy season with the lakers. The past 2 off-seasons, fans, writers, analysts, media personalities, "Lakers Vs Nets in the finals", with both teams trading for "superstars" in order to be prepared for this hypothetical finals match up which seemed all but inevitable at one point…

fast forward to 2022 and we’ve yet to see either squad make it out of the second round in the same year and after a season that was disappointing for both sides the rumours now are no longer about a star studded finals match up, but star studded trade packages that swap the two biggest variables in each franchises plans for the future. Will Russell Westbrook be able to adapt and sacrifice his numbers for the greater good of the team, will kyrie Irving ever play a full season of basketball?

Of course it’s obvious to put these two players together in trade discussions, the similar situations, the history between KD and Russ as well as Kyrie and Lebron like was mentioned before, both duos have shown they can at least make deep post season runs together, and one duo has a ring to back that up. Combine a healthy Kyrie Irving with Lebron James and Anthony Davis you are looking at a very top heavy, but scary Los Angeles Lakers squad. We know what Lebron plus each of them can do, it only makes sense that the 3 of them would fit perfectly.On the other end of things over in Brooklyn, the situation on paper doesn’t look as good. After James harden decided he didn’t want to deal with Kai’s vaccination status and requested a trade to Philly, the nets were stuck with Ben Simmons and quality role players, who were content in Philly and never wanted to play for Brooklyn but had to be thrown in to make the trade work. Not an amazing package for someone who was in the MVP conversation carrying your team (though he has slowed down in Philly) to get back 1 all star who refuses to play, and two role players who would be beneficial to the teams future, if they (Andre Drummond especially) hadn’t already made it abundantly clear that they are not staying in Brooklyn. At this point in time that trade doesn’t look like it worked out so well for either side, which obviously could make Sean Marks and the nets front office hesitant to take another big risk like this to get back a player who just had the worst season of his career in almost every aspect. Slapping him on a lacklustre roster with Kevin Durant and 2nd best teammate who, when available to play, won’t even take a 3 point shot, doesn’t seem like a recipe for success, which makes the pipe dream of the russ kyrie swap seem all but impossible…

But what if there was another team willing to take on Russell Westbrook? Charlotte has expressed interest in Russ and his expiring contract, so sending some combination of Terry Rozier, Kelly Oubre Jr and Gordon Hayward to Brooklyn with Westbrook to Charlotte and Kyrie to the Lakers wouldn’t be a terrible idea for all sides. The biggest concern (and the one i should be most worried about as a lakers fan) is Kyrie Irving’s availability and commitment to basketball, but nba fans and lakers front office have seen that Russell Westbrook does not work on this roster as currently constructed, if I’m Rob Pelinka why not take the gamble on Kyrie? even when he doesn’t play 75+ games like Russell Westbrook did, he’s a much better fit with Lebron and AD and provides you with ridiculously efficient shooting splits, and is a much easier piece to fit around the not so elite talent the lakers have to pick from this offseason in the minimum deal bargain bin. Kyrie has until June 29th to opt in to his $36.9 million player option (8 days away at the time of writing) so Rob Pelinka and any other potential franchise interested in will have a very long week ahead of them anticipating Irving’s next move…